The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct is a throwback to the dark days of licensed video games, long before Rocksteady's Batman rewrote the rulebook.

This was a time when studios relied on the marketing pull of a licensed property to paper over the cavernous gameplay cracks in their limp tie-in creations.

Terminal Reality's new first-person shooter, based on the AMC TV series rather than The Walking Dead comic books, brings forth some interesting ideas, but lacks the coherency to knit them together into an experience that feels distinct and important beyond the licence.

And it is not like The Walking Dead property is not suited to video game interpretation. Telltale recently gained critical acclaim for its episodic series, and that success just serves to highlight the flaws in Survival Instinct's ho hum undead smash-fest.

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct puts you in the shoes of redneck nutjob Daryl Dixon, brother to the equally bonkers Merle.

The story, which acts as a prequel to the television series, focuses on Daryl and a host of other characters trying to navigate apocalyptic Georgia to a supposed safe haven in Atlanta.

Events kick off with you taking the view of Daryl's father, who gets bitten by the walkers while out hunting.

It is fun at first to plug zombie rednecks in the head with a rifle, or sheath their skulls in two with a hammer. But after a while, it becomes a drag.

With Daryl unable to do what must be done and shoot his own father, his half-uncle Jess instead steps forward and puts your lights out. Then the familiar TV credits roll. Admittedly, it's a pretty affecting opening.

But even though the game focuses on the early days of the zombie outbreak, Daryl then takes to battering the undead with joy, gusto and a string of one-liners, only missing a 'squeal, piggy, squeal'.

Playing as Daryl, you must move between different locations on the road towards Atlanta, battling the walkers and trying to survive.

And on this score, the game is surprisingly complex. You must manage your fuel, food and ammo carefully using light RPG mechanics in order to keep your wagon train running.

Each journey segment involves choosing whether to use the back roads, middle roads or highways, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Taking the back ways uses more petrol but enables more stops for suppliers, while the highways need less petrol but involve fewer stops.

After stopping, you can task members of your party, such as Jess, with going out on scavenge missions, but each time there is a risk involved and you have to weigh that against the gain.

The game has plenty of creepy, small-town-gone-bad atmosphere, and even some scares, albeit using pretty tried-and-tested horror mechanics.

However, the two big problems with The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct come in that you never really care if Daryl and his gang make it out alive, and that the gameplay is just so dull, poorly designed and monotonous.

Several of the mission worlds seem rather hurriedly finished, and the undead character models are regurgitated so frequently that you start to think, 'Didn't I bash that guy's head in a few minutes ago?' On the brightside, at least Terminal Reality didn't even attempt any multiplayer.

Overall this game feels like a missed opportunity. The team at Terminal Reality had all the ingredients at hand to cook up a great shooter based on The Walking Dead TV series.

They even had real Walking Dead actors Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker lend their vocal talents.

But unfortunately, the thing that made the TV show work is not present in the game. It's not just about killing the undead horde, but about caring for the characters and ensuring they don't get killed.

The premise of the game is not terrible, but there needed to be more intelligence and purpose in the application to elevate it above the mundanity of clubbing endless zombies to death. If only someone could make a really good Walking Dead game. Oh, wait...